diǎn
dot
Phonosemantic compound. 黑 represents the meaning and 占 represents the sound.
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
diǎn
dot, speck, spot; point, degree; point; dot; drop; speck; o'clock; point (in space or time); to draw a dot; to check on a list; to choose; to order (food in a restaurant); to touch briefly; to hint; to light; to ignite; to pour a liquid drop by drop; (old) one fifth of a two-hour watch 更[gēng]; dot stroke in Chinese characters; classifier for items
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*tˤemʔ | temX | diǎn | black spot |
Statistics
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 99.9039% of movies
61st most common character in movies
128th most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 17 |
Simplified | |
Unicode | U+9EDE |
Shuowen | “點,小黑也。从黑,占聲。” |
Sources
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